Comparing MySQL Performance

An anonymous reader writes "With the introduction of the 2.6 Linux kernel, FreeBSD 5-STABLE, Solaris 10, and now NetBSD 2.0, you might be wondering which of them offers superior database performance. These two articles will show you how to benchmark operating system performance using MySQL on these operating systems so you can find out for yourself if you're missing out. While this may not necessarily be indicative of overall system performance or overall database application performance, it will tell you specifically how well MySQL performs on your platform."

Comments

postgres

[fludlight]

what about postgresql?

That's all well and good, but...

[Sheetrock]

MySQL is a different animal from PostgreSQL, which is itself a horse of a different color than DBI. To truly profile these operating systems you must take into account the differences in:

• Tuple calculus
• Transaction journaling
• Operator space/system call overhead
• Disk cache timings

And much more... in essence, you can't be certain these benchmarks hold true for the performance of all databases and it may even be a mute argument -- the same operating system may be tweaked differently if you're fileserving or mailserving or networkserving or if you're only dataserving. A useful tool, but one that must be run on each server.

Why do people use MySQL over Postgres?

[Vellmont]

Slightly off topic, but if it's really performance you want, why don't people just use Postgres? It's had a much better feature set for years, and is starting to get enterprise level features. It seems like MySQL is somehow the default choice for open source projects, but as far as I can tell it offers no advantages and many disadvantages over postgres.
Is it just MySQL is slightly easier to setup?

Re:Why do people use MySQL over Postgres?

[SerialHistorian]

I've written a bunch of enterprise-class stuff on MySQL.

The first and second answers are inertia. All of my tools work with MySQL and I'd have to spend a week or two re-writing them for PostgresSQL, and I can't shake loose that kind of time right now.

Also, I have a set of redundant, mirrored MySQL servers in my colo box that run all of the websites I've built, and I'd have to get more rack space or convert everything over to Postgres at the same time. Neither of which are cost effective when what I have ... works.

The third answer is that MySQL is blazingly fast at doing simple things. Where Oracle (The other RDBMS that I'm familiar with) can return simple select queries or complex insert or joined select queries in .5 to 1.0 seconds each, MySQL can return simple queries in .01 seconds and stupidly complex queries in 5-10 seconds. Since 100% of what I'm doing is simple selects or can be hacked very quickly to seem like simple selects, there's no reason to use anything more powerful for what I'm doing.

I don't need to have "good habits" ... I don't need to have nth degree optimized queries. I don't use 99.99% of the features that MySQL has, not to mention all the features that Postgres has that I wouldn't use. (And don't get me started on Oracle.) It's also faster for me, in both database query return and programmer time, to execute 5 simple, general, fast queries that are part of a code library (and when the database structure changes, edit that one code library) than it is for me to write one really complex query for each code module (and have to edit every module when the database structure changes).

What it comes down to is that it works well as a lightweight database for websites and web apps, and there's a ton of community support and literature. It's not Oracle. It never will be. It's not useful for everything. But when you need a lightweight database to handle a ton of simple select queries without melting down, .... MySQL fits the bill. Why swat a fly with a sledgehammer?

How relevant are those benchmarks

[Donny Smith]

Does anyone go: "OK, I need the OS for my mySQL project. I'll benchmark BSD, Linux, Windows, and choose the fastest OS."

Difference among OS should be pretty much unimportant unless one's an ISP or big enterprise. I would choose the OS based on completely different criteria:
1) Existing skillset (advantage to existing skills)
2) Existing deployed OS (advantage to OS already deployed)
3) My company's OS strategy (advantage to the OS and the CPU platform we chose to standardize on)
4) Existing software (if I already have X vendor's backup agent for mySQL on Linux or database tuning tools, I wouldn't use BSD just to (potentially) gain an extra 5% in some ludicrous benchmark result).

Today's hardware (and operating systems) are so cheap that it's almost irrelevant what OS and hardware goes into many a project.
Look at the new HP's 25p and 35p blades (Opteron-based) - a 2 processor 1GB RAM version is just some $1,700 more expensive than a 1 processor 512MB RAM version.
It's easy to lose that $1,700 in downtime, spend it on a Windows engineer's new RHCE or such...

Amazing

[cranos]

Somebody posts a comparison of an application running on different OS's as a system benchmark, and what do people do? Attack MySQL.

God guys get over it, MySQL is here and it has actually proven itself to be usefull. Yes its missing features and has issues, but it fills the niche it is aimed at.

Gentoo From Scratch???

[RoadWarriorX]

After reading the benchmarks, I noticed that the Linux distribution chosen was Gentoo. I like Gentoo (and use it myself). The author of the newsforge article does not really state if the all of the kernel, libraries and applications were built completely from scratch or did he use a stage 2 or 3 install.

If the box was built from source, I would expect that Linux benchmarks would be higher simply because the kernel, libraries, and applications were most likely tuned to the hardware. Otherwise, I would like to see RedHat, or SUSE, or other "out of the box" distros in addition to the others.

Just my $0.02